New Nick Carter Weekly, No. 17

About this issue

This issue of New Nick Carter Weekly (April 24, 1897) features the opening installment of a serial titled "Trim is Taken at a Disadvantage" (author bylined as "the Author of 'Nick Carter'"). The tale unfolds in Cincinnati, where partners Jack Hardy and Albert Gardner engage in a violent quarrel in their commission merchant office, their dispute concerning alleged business impropriety. After staff members separate the combatants and Gardner departs, a skeleton key left on the floor goes unidentified. When clerk Frank Beck enters the private office to request Hardy's assistance moments later, he discovers Hardy dead on the floor with a deep throat wound. Partner Henry Warren examines the body, finds it cold and deceased, and mysteriously delays notification of authorities, instead examining a court-side door and contemplating the circumstances in troubled silence before withdrawing with Beck to the main office.